


You and Me

by The_Unqualified1



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, Halfway Through Harrow, Hallucination Harrow, Not Canon Compliant, Random Half-Assed Theories, Their Version of Romance, smooches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29759307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Unqualified1/pseuds/The_Unqualified1
Summary: You have survived much. You have been left by the Body. You have had your past prize dismissed by God. And you look to the future of the end...But then you pulled... and I could follow. Briefly. Ever so briefly.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	You and Me

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, back again with a half-baked fic based on how I felt after reading the chapter in Harrow that ended with the line “you never could have known what he saw was me”
> 
> Spoilers for Harrow (half of it at least) to follow.
> 
> Now I’m right about to start Act 5 and I had this idea and it wouldn’t let me go and I’m almost positive it’s wrong but I still liked the idea... it was... I don’t know. Good in my head 😂
> 
> Anywho hope ya’ll will like it!

“Please.” You had said when you’d reached for The Body. And then The Body was gone. Or it was never really there. The conversation with the Emperor levied you to believe your mind had conjured the thing all together through years of loneliness and shock.

_There isn’t a bypass... It wouldn’t answer to my greatest Lyctors... Whatever you thought you did you didn’t..._

You’d now stumbled away from this moment of mind mutilation back to your room by some force unbeknownst, with the distant, unbothered ringing of, _Harrowhark who the hell’s been tampering with your temporal lobe?_

The statement meant nothing in the long run to a short demise. The number of ‘who the hells’ you had been plagued with all of your short Lyctorhood tenor was staggering. This one hardly blipped on your radar. Until your mass had made itself back to your room.

Your feet had dragged blood behind you even as it pushed out shards of glass, and you made your way to the mirror in your washroom. You don’t know what you hoped to see. Nothing would be preferable. You needed another haircut. There was blood coming down from one side of your head where the glass has cut. You reached for it without thought. _Who the hell had been tampering with her temporal lobe?_ When you pressed it you knew. It had been your own hands. And like a painter reliving strokes, your fingertips couldn’t help but follow the threads at the topmost layer.

Something had been masked... something large had been rewritten in your head... it was a wonder how far it spread into other areas of your mind. Short and long term memories. Some auditory. Motor cortex.

You knew better than to pull on one of these threads... The importance of them wasn’t clear, even though sewn by your own hand, but you were a meticulous person. Undoing any piece could undo everything. But you had always been too curious for your own good. You slid your celestial hand around one, not giving enough to pull it loose, just to disturb it... the vibrations took hold of your senses immediately as you tightened your fingers. And then you saw it... in the mirror. There was a ringing in your head that you had been ignoring, now unable to as it deafened. Blood siphoned through one of your ears and down a nostril. These sensations were frankly banal and ignorable, but the truly startling thing... was one of your eyes... had changed...

Much the way Ianthe’s fought between two souls to boot, as did your corneas wrestle with my own... but I couldn’t help myself. I had seen your struggles. I had seen you push. I had seen your desolation and destruction pursed on a ledge. And when you looked in the mirror and the eye looking back was mine... I had to reach. I pulled on the other side of the thread.

**********

Harrow collapsed back as she’d seen the golden glow in her eyes, clasping over her face which now burned as if she’d stared at something too bright. The ringing stopped but she still saw spots on the back of her eyelids, and pushed back up to standing, supporting herself on the frame of the door to the washroom. She blinked slowly as her eyes readjusted to the dark of the Mithrateum.

The mirror now held pain, as she knew it would. Everything held pain. But it held more curiosity then that, so she chanced one more look. Planning a quick flick of the eyes, and then to be averted. Returned to her bleak cot in a bleak room in a bleak pocket of space for bleak rest.

But instead her eyes froze on a figure. A person.

A person in her bathroom. One she’d never recalled seeing.

They were taller than her. Built like a soldier, but one that had had to fight for every scrap of food and had slightly malnourished but toned bulk to them. Her hair was striking red to a black environment, like a starving flame among rotted charcoal. It was worn in a short cut along the top of her head, resembling a flame as well in a way. Pointed, slightly wild near the top, shaved at the sides. Her clothes... were ninth blacks. She’d recognize them anywhere. And her eyes... golden. Like a halo.

“ _Nav_.” She said from something beyond a pocket. Beyond a memory. From a truth that had been stolen from her long ago.

The Nav in question merely smiled, something so genuine and surreally given she didn’t know what to do with it.

“Long time no see Bone-butt.” She said.

There were many reactions poised on the end of Harrow’s instincts. Her exoskeleton was hardening, even though this was most likely another illusion. And even though it didn’t seem to want to harm her, she felt a desire to harm _it._ She desired something else more, and that action was what indeed won out. Harrowhark lunged for the figure, who turned out not to be an illusion as she wrapped her fingers in her shirt, and turned her body to slam it against the side of the wall. There was a thud. There was a sound. There was something real in her hand...

And then she stood up on her tip toes and pressed her lips to those of the non-illusion. She didn’t necessarily know why. Maybe it was the company she kept of late. Maybe the imminent death sitting at the end of her tunnel. Maybe watching God have a three-way. Or something deeper yet she felt pulling at the back of her limited understanding. She kissed the woman in front of her with unapologetic fury.

The woman in turn didn’t seem to mind. She’d hummed softly at the first kiss before moving her arms to Harrow’s back and shoulder (though Harrowhark didn’t remember giving her permission to touch her) and held her steady. Like a bearing in an ocean that threatened to throw her, but had no chance to break her from this grasp.

And she stayed in that gravitational pull as a wiling member, pressing mouth and skin and all of her remaining self into this ghoul.

She finally pulled back to look at those gold eyes. A new word on her lips as she saw the stars in them.

“Gideon.” She said, feeling the way it rolled off her tongue. Familiar. Beyond familiar. Beloved. Cared for. She still didn’t know how, but she knew it the truth.

“The one and only.” This Gideon responded with a smile. “Well, not only I guess. That’s a whole other thing.” Harrow didn’t understand. There was so so much she didn’t understand. But she did understand that there was someone before her that she could hold and be held by. Someone that wasn’t Ianthe, or a loathsome saint. She lunged for her lips again.

“Not so much teeth.” Gideon said with something like a chuckle, but her words didn’t interrupt again. She stood there and let herself be used, as Harrow _needed_ her to be. She claimed her lips until she felt numb. Pressing into her warmth and feeling her push back. Tilting herself from side to side as air passed between them. Stolen and returned and never the same as the first gulp her lungs had held. Tears came down her eyes. Blood pooled from her nose. Gideon didn’t stop her. She held her. She returned the energy. It evolved from mindless, ravenous, desperation to something almost kindly. Something almost caring though even that seemed an emotion far beyond her capability.

When Harrow finally felt the ends of her energy she all but collapsed against her summoned illusion. Gideon seemed to know it was coming and caught her, almost too easily, and slid them both gently to the floor. Her knees pointed up and her feet planted firmly on the ground, going out around her with Harrow crumbled between her. Arms softly encasing her. Head against her chest.

She felt almost... not in mortal peril, which was the closest thing to safe she’d ever allow herself.

They laid there for awhile. She didn’t know how long, there were no windows any longer to tell the trifle passing of time, and Harrow didn’t really care. Time was meaningless, yet also fleeting as a realization struck her.

“You’re gone.” The words fell out when she finally used an ounce of her Lyctoral skill to sense that the lack of heartbeat. She could’ve just used her ear as well. It was pressed against the unmoving chest. Listening to the empty shell of a person.

It wasn’t the first person she’d thought dead that had reappeared. It wasn’t even that she’d thought her dead. She hadn’t thought anything of her... she didn’t know she existed or have any memories she could find...

All she was met with was a soft hum. Which felt uncharacteristic for the woman she somehow knew like the back of her hand and yet was sure was a stranger to her. Even her words… _you’re gone._

That implied she had once been, and Harrow still wasn’t sure she was more than a figment of her hormones and loneliness projected on some new construct. Though if she was ever going to make a construct she damn well was sure no Harrow of the Ninth, Harrow of the First, or any other potential Reverend Daughters would have made a construct like _this._

“How?” She followed after the silence had sat. How so many things… but the word was the most she could manage. She figured it was open enough to gain _any_ kind of explanation.

“It’s hard to explain Nonagesimus… and truthfully there’s not much I understand. Other than you’re feeling like shit, and you pulled.”

“I _pulled_?” She repeated, disdainfully. “Pulled what pray tell?”

Gideon laughed.

“All that macking and you’re still so uptight.”

Harrow furrowed her brow and imagined pulling her spine out her ass for her direct disrespect.

“But you pulled here-“ And she tapped the pad of her index thumb feather light against her temple.

Harrow imagined putting her hand there as well, but hadn’t the energy. But she understood. Her tempered lobe… actually she didn’t understand shit.

“So now you’re… just here?”

“I wish it were that simple.” Gideon sighed. She looked at Harrow with an expression she couldn’t name, but made her cheeks red. She hoped her smeared paint would cover for her. The brute of a person stood surprisingly quick and scooped her into her arms in the way that heroes were painted to carry helpless maidens. The only reasonable response seemed to be to thrash, as this was most unbecoming. Her thrash was a slight kick and her curling closer into the chest of the foreign savior.

“You need some rest loser. Come on.” She said softly. With protective kindness. A command given because of an investment in the person, not a bit of advice to make you feel inferior or periphery.

She placed her down in the cot and leaned over her for a moment before pulling back and Harrow’s arm shot out like a cannon.

“Don’t leave me.” Harrow said, and the expression on her ghosts face fell to something so heartbreakingly bittersweet. Her whole body froze as if a moment before pain.

“I hate when you say that…” She finally said, and leaned forward to brush away another stray tear that had leaked out of Harrow’s eye socket. “I hate even more that I can never seem to stay. Cursed I guess, I wanted to get away for so long… away from the ninth. Away from you.” The ghost sat on the end of the bed, facing the room instead of Harrow, elbows held up on her knees.

“Now when I wanted to be…close...” She sighed, cutting off her sentence and letting it sit. After much contemplation she turned back toward her, laying in the territory the sword had occupied for so long.

“I can’t stay long.” The voice said, looking deeply at her with those honey sweet eyes.

Harrow nodded as the only response.

And they shifted slightly, making room to fold around each other and Harrow found herself indeed drowsy. But she was afraid for the dream to officially come to an end. To let this go…

“Will you be here when I wake?” She asked as her eyes fluttered shut, like a child needing confirmation the sun would rise. She already knew the answer. Optimism had never being her strongsuit.

The illusion hummed again, that thoughtful sound that wasn’t all together confident. More an acknowledgement that the answer was complex and tedious.

“Not yet.” She settled on. “But just keep waking up... eventually I will be.”

“Keep waking up… that is awfully cheerful.” _With apocalypse on the horizon._

“Harrow… don’t you die on me.” Her voice fell to something soft, like a whisper but with urgency, enough to pull her back from the starts of sleep. When she looked into those eyes again there was such determination in the golden rings. Then this Gideon reached up and cupped her hand around her cheek. She dreaded the pressure of another person touching her, but also found herself leaning into the offered hand.

“I doubt it will be up to me.” Harrow said, trying to sound cross, only sounding tired.

“It’s always up to us whether we live or die.” Gideon smiled that bittersweet again. “It’s a shitty choice honestly…” She said, and Harrow felt a sudden pain in her chest that was familiar and foreign and reminded her of something crippling that felt like breaking.

She looked up suddenly, her eyes blown wide at the end of a revelation, and Gideon noticed. She leaned in and pressed their lips back together and Harrow let herself sink against the feeling. Fade from the cusp of collapse. The illusion pulled back.

“Sorry Non… I can’t have you remembering just yet. But soon… soon… ok?” She said in that soft little tone that should have pissed her off but instead caused her to press her head against the ghost’s chest, curling up into her frame.

“Swear it?” She said feebly. Not sure what she was swearing to, but she needed this person… this remnant or invasion of some other force to be in her life.

“Sure, wouldn’t be the first time.” She said with almost humor on the end of her sentence. “I swear by the Locked Tomb.”

“The tomb…” Harrow breathed in almost defeat, briefly imagining the place she’d apparently never been… “Whatever you thought you did, you didn’t…” She muttered her Emperor’s final word on the matter.

Gideon looked back at her concerned. Her eyes slid side to side as if they would be eavesdropped upon, before she leaned in a fraction closer.

“Harrow… don’t listen to everything you hear…”

She felt something like ice water spreading thought her veins.

“I was _there_.” She whispered. And it burst something in the back of her brain.

“ _Gri_ -“ She started before a finger was pressed to her lips and the red-haired illusion shook her head ever so slightly.

“Don’t pull that thread too tight…” She said with a warning, and she let her eyes flutter shut again. “And get some rest, honestly. You look like shit.”

“Fuck you Nav.” She mumbled, and heard a hum like a laugh as this Nav pressed her chin to the top of her head, tucking her into her wide arms.

“Quite the offer. Maybe next time Nonagesimus.”

And she faded off to sleep.

**********

When you woke in the morning you blinked at the side of your bed where the two-handed sword was supposed to lay to find it missing. Panic spiked for that detestable instrument, only for you to realize it was still welded to your back. You’d slept with it still in its sheath. Panic subsided and you flopped back against the bed for a moment.

There was a hum in the air and on your lips… but it felt like a memory of a thought… and it was gone soon enough, the more you woke.

It was two days to the apocalypse.

You’d prepare yourself.

And I… would watch. And wait… for the moment I could keep my vow.

And get my damn sword back.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so the Me line like broke me cause I was like... there’s a narrator. It all makes sense. Shit. Amazing.
> 
> So I went with the idea that it was Gideon. There are a few lines that fit how she would talk about Harrow, and I thought it would be a really cool cool way to keep Gideon in the book since she’s absent through it all. But I’m getting the vibe that that is not the case... 
> 
> But if it was... there could be this moment of tenderness, but not tenderness. Like this is not romantic necessarily... but it is by their standards. I don’t know, I love them. Have this vomit idea 😂
> 
> Imma go finish the book byeeeeee
> 
> UPDATE: I WAS FREAKNG RIGHT


End file.
